Posted: February 25th, 2010 | Author: Joe Kutchera | Filed under: Hispanics, Interactive Marketing, International | No Comments »
This article originally appeared on MediaPost.
After reading Felipe Korzenny’s and Lee Vann’s column about Hispanics’ adoption of social media relative to other ethnic demographics, a question came to mind: how will social networks affect the acculturation process among Hispanics? The ability to keep in touch with family and friends from countries-of-origin via email, Skype and online newspapers back home makes it easier than ever. Travel costs are at historic lows. And computer and mobile phone prices fall every year.
Combine these questions with the fact that more communities like Miami and McAllen, Texas, are reaching the tipping point of having a majority of Spanish speakers, and the question about how online media affects acculturation deserves some consideration. Six experts discuss this issue, after which you are invited to leave your comments, links to research and additional questions below.
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Posted: October 23rd, 2009 | Author: Joe Kutchera | Filed under: Hispanics, Innovation, International, Latam | No Comments »
This article originally appeared on MediaPost.
“Multicultural marketing is at the core of Western Union’s business,” said Gail Galuppo, EVP and CMO of Western Union at the ANA’s Multicultural conference recently. She shared with the attendees how Western Union launched their new “Yes!” campaign in 22 languages across 200 countries with the goal of making a more emotional connection with their consumers. Ms. Galuppo says that “Yes! is a culture, especially among immigrants who hear a lot of “No.”
Who is their target audience? It is the 200 million international immigrants from markets like Haiti, where remittance services represent 40% of GDP, or Mexico and India where transfers from the U.S. represent 3-8% of the local economy. In total, remittance services were a $368 billion dollars globally in 2008, growing 3x the rate of the global economy.
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Posted: September 3rd, 2009 | Author: Joe Kutchera | Filed under: Hispanics, International, Latam | No Comments »
With computer prices falling, Internet users skyrocketing and no borders on the Internet, how can marketers turn their international Spanish-language web site visitors into revenues? That is the question that Juan Tornoe and I will answer in our panel discussion at SXSW Interactive in 2010. Please submit your feedback, suggestions and vote for the panel here on SXSW’s panel picker:
Some of the questions that we will answer include:
1. How do consumers cross geo-political boundaries to find, read about and buy what they want?
2. How can marketers understand those trends and then formally create products for international markets?
3. Why did The Home Depot shut down its Spanish-language site for U.S. Hispanics only 4 months after launching it?
4. In contrast, why did Best Buy embrace their visitors from Mexico and Latin America on their Spanish-language e-commerce site for U.S. Hispanics?
5. When will Mandarin, Spanish, and Portuguese bypass English as the top languages online?
Posted: May 18th, 2009 | Author: Joe Kutchera | Filed under: Hispanics, Interactive Marketing, International, Latam | No Comments »
This article originally appeared on MediaPost.
Put yourself in the shoes of a bi-lingual or Spanish-preferring U.S. Hispanic and try searching in Spanish on Google, Yahoo or MSN and what do you find? A good portion of the results, sometimes approaching 50%, come from sites based in Mexico, Spain, and other Spanish-speaking countries.
Let’s look at some examples I found recently on the first page of natural (not paid) results on Google.com:
1) Vuelos a Nueva York (flights to New York): 9 out of 10 were foreign
2) Restaurantes en Los Angeles (restaurants in L.A.): 6 out of 11 were foreign
3) Recetas mexicanas (Mexican recipes): 5 out of 10 were foreign
4) Computadoras baratas (cheap computers): 6 out of 10 were foreign
Globalization of Information and News
However surprising this may be, we need to look no further than Google’s corporate mission statement to see why this is the case: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Google and other search engines index sites globally while we marketers, agencies and media sellers work within the economic and political borders of the U.S.
A search engine robot ranks results in each language by keyword ranking, the quality of the content and the number of sites that link to that site (with a possible preference to sites based within that country’s borders). So, when a Hispanic searches for a niche subject that a Hispanic publisher hasn’t provided in Spanish, where will a U.S. search engine send them? Wherever else in the world that content exists online in Spanish: Mexico, Spain, Argentina, etc.
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Posted: April 11th, 2009 | Author: Joe Kutchera | Filed under: Hispanics, Innovation | No Comments »
This article first appeared on MediaPost’s Engage:Hispanics column.
Is brand building with consumers an art or a science? Angel Martinez answered this question during his keynote presentation at the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies‘ Media & Account Management Conference last week, where he recounted his life growing up in The Bronx, becoming CMO of Reebok, building it into a sports powerhouse and, most recently, joining the Deckers Outdoor Corp., maker of the Uggs and Teva shoe brands, as CEO and chairman.
CEO and Chairman of Deckers Outdoor Corp.
Born in Cuba, Martinez and his family moved to the South Bronx, where he spent his teenage years. During the height of the Summer of Love (1968), his family moved to California’s Bay Area. He summed up those two different worlds with two versions of the same shoe: Black high-top “Cons,” Converse’s “Chuck Taylor” shoes versus white low-top “Chucks.” Wear the white low-tops in The Bronx and you’ll get beat up. Wear the black high-tops in the Bay Area and you’ll get beat up there. It was the purchase of his first pair of “Cons” that drew him to the footwear industry and interested him in marketing.
Growing up in those two different worlds gave Martinez insights into his work today as CEO of a trend-setting shoe and fashion marketer who aims to understand consumers’ needs and deliver upon them. He shared 15 key insights for what all brand stewards — Hispanic or general market — ought to follow. Following are his five most memorable:
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